But will it be empty? I also wanna check out those markings near superman and take a look at SWF for any signs of a removal. Tomorrow I'll be an investagator for these forums to bring news, of course legally!
/\ There probably won't be any signs of SWF leaving visible, it's just sitting there not opening. The markers are in Orleans Place, so if anywhere, look there. Also, I will be there tomorrow.
Universal Orlando Mechanical Engineer Marathon down, Goofy to go.
Im there its probably gonna be busy. I went on the last Wednesday of the season on the 29 and there were no signs on SWF thats its being removed and there was still water on the ride but it was closed so I doubt theyll be putting anything in there or removing it unless SF anounce it. The RR was closed maybe so safety inspectors can investigate the ride because of what happened who knows. I cant find the markers. Waterpark was closed and lifeguards were all over the place running rides. Crowds were light in the morning but got busy by late afternoon. Eagle had a problem deja vu was open got to ride it 6X. King Chaos caused chaos when it accidentally move and the restraints went down when the ride was over as people were getting off its a good thing nobody got hurt and fell off and That Guy was there I wouldve said hi but he looked busy so Hi TG. Had a fun day hope to have more fun this Sun. Wrong forum right who cares its short why waste all that space.
It wasnt packed, I took some pics of superman near the lift and station. It wans't too bad today.... Vu wasnt open, although a manager told me it would....
I thought the park was very busy today, but the crowd was a little late arriving. When we came back from lunch around 300pm at least 1/3 of the farther north lot was full,
The amount of rides closed was awful!!!!
The following rides were closed
Splashwater Falls
King Chaos(wasnt working when we went to that part of the park at noon and never saw it open after that))
Space Shuttle America
Yankee Clipper
Splashwater Falls
Antique Car ride(forgot exact name)
Red train on AE
Half of Giant Drop
Hester Chester( never rode it and i think im a little off on the exact name)
DeJaVue
And Ragin Cagin was also down most of the day, it did open but it closed way early, went by at 300 pm and it was already closed but dont know how much earlier it closed.
And very few shows were operating.
^Look, theres nothing the park can do to prepare for the hundreds of kids leaving the park for the season because school starts this week. Obviously they want their last weekend of summer off before school starts up again. And no, there aren't a bunch of senior citizens ready to take over and run all the rides. Its just a bad time of year.
Top 5 wood-5-Goliath 4-Ravine Flyer II 3-Phoenix 2-Voyage 1-El Toro Top 5 Steel- 5-Velocicoaster 4- Maverick 3- Fury 325 2-Steel Vengeance 1-X2 Coaster Count: 444
guitarhero119 wrote:less than perfect staffing happens every year around this time, why is anybody shocked or complaining?
I don't think anyone is really shocked. However, I think one reason people people might be complaining is that one of Shapiro's many promises was that staffing would be much improved this year. From my experience early in the season, and according to some of the above posters, he didn't really deliver on that promise - which is disappointing for people like me who like to go to the park only early and late in the season.
I went yesterday, and it wasn't so bad. It was crowded, but not unmanageable. The only things that really ticked me off were the prices. I'm not sure when they changed it, but the price to rent the smallest lockers in Hurricane Harbor went up from $9.00 to $13.00!!! It's absolutely ridiculous and there needs to be a point where they stop the prices before absolutely no one is willing to pay them!
It was also very frustrating that the Red side of Eagle wasn't open! I noticed that one of the trains was just sitting on the straight portion of the track right before the lifthill (not the transfer track), which made me wonder what was going on, and hope they didn't decide like last year that it's perfectly okay to just shut down one side for the rest of the year so they can do some trackwork.
King Chaos was open at the beginning of the day, but I didn't really notice that it closed later on.
And more staffing would be great instead of having just one person working on each flat ride (Condor was the only one I saw that had more than one person running it) and at food stands.
SF corporate has extreme micromanaged/cut the operations budget this year which has led to lower capacity.
ThemeParkFan07 wrote:And more staffing would be great instead of having just one person working on each flat ride (Condor was the only one I saw that had more than one person running it) and at food stands.
Fling, Camp rides, Bugs Bunny NP rides, Wiggles rides (excluding BRC), Fun Machine, Triple Play, JWR, BEB, Rue Le Dodge (sometimes double normally is single operator), Chubasco, River Rocker, Ricochet, ERC, and Whirligig have always been single operator rides, or at least since Premier bought SF from Time Warner and made massive cuts back in the late 90s.
SO just because EVERY year SF runs the park in a incompetent manner at the end of the year we should just excuse it??????
If you know some employee's are going to be leaving then you do the best you can to hire replacements and then properly train them, even if it means going to a temp service to run some things and move other long term employee's to do something else.
Parks can hire alot of older employee's and be run in a very efficent/friendly manner which I expereinced first hand at both Silver Dollar City and Dollywood where all the rides were operated by middle age/older adults and not run by kids.
If at end end of the year if you are going to close down most shows and not staff alot of rides then dont charge the same amount of money to get into the park as you did in mid-summer when all shows and rides were running.
I am not by any means calling it acceptable or even right that the park is understaffed, but to bring it up constantly is dumb. This year the park has clearly tried to replace its force of students using the lifeguards from the waterpark. They did make an effort to replace there missing employees to say they didnt would be ignorant. If you dont like the understaffing than dont attend during the end of the season.
Remember, there's nothing but air beneath the chair.
/\ They did that last year too, what I am upset about is that the full-time office people or even supervisors could have been out there operating rides as well, just as they have in previous years. It just doesn't seem like they were really trying hard at all to open those rides.
Universal Orlando Mechanical Engineer Marathon down, Goofy to go.
There have been more office clerks operating rides this year than any other year I can remember, you cant tell because they are in the same uniform as all other park employees. Supervisors are not allowed to run rides if they are on radio unless its an emergency (ride operator passed out and needs spot taken until someone else can be found to take the spot for example). The lifeguards are a huge help, the park purposely has hired a lot more South Africans that are here through October to help with staffing for fall. Unfortunately though the nature of the industry the park will be understaffed as all seasonal parks are around this time.
If you are going to close rides, why would you close DeJaVue since the ride is more popular than most coaster, especially more so than Iron Wolf which was operating, and to compensate for rides being Shut Down why not stat RB with 3 trains to start the day rather than adding one later when you know it will be busy due to the fact so many other rides are closed.
Also they should have opened up more than half of Giant Drop to help the ride capacity. I would also agree that more office people should have been working to make up the loss of employee's. I didnt notice the same amount of games closed in comparsion to rides that werent operating.
On a different note, anyone notice those sexy new "This ride is currently closed due to technical difficulties" with a wrench on it that replaced the old blue signs?
Last edited by BP317 on September 5th, 2007, 4:22 pm, edited 8 times in total.